Interflora refines its routes with GeoConcept

Interflora British Unit has undertaken a major analysis exercise to gain a clearer picture than ever before of the resources that are involved within the organisation’s delivery network. With the aid of a new pricing matrix based on travel time and distance, which has been developed with the help of the GeoConcept geographic information system from MapMechanics, Interflora can now pinpoint what a delivery actually involves.

The system is able to work out the best-placed florists’ businesses to serve each of the organisation’s 35,000 delivery locations in Britain, Ireland and

Channel Islands, and calculate the real-world time it would take to reach those locations from each starting point. This information enables Interflora to calculate the delivery payments required on a standardised basis for the first time.

"The result is a much clearer and more transparent system,” says the Interflora’s database manager, Nathan Young. “It’s also perceived as fairer because everyone can see how the rates are worked out. It’s quite a revolutionary step forward in the way we operate.”

The system has also highlighted areas of low network coverage, and situations where Members were travelling very long distances to delivery points, incurring disproportionately high transport fees.

Now the organisation is developing an innovative system to bring greater precision to deliveries in the Republic of Ireland, where there are no postcodes and locations have to be geocoded in another way.

Interflora’s network delivers flowers and related products in Britain, Ireland and Channel Islands through a network of 1,850 independent member-florists. Customers are all charged the same £4.95 flat rate for delivery regardless of destination, but until the new system was implemented, payments to “executing Members” for deliveries in distant areas were based on a complex matrix of charges, which in turn were based on rates advised by Members themselves.

The first step in the new project was to use QuickAddress to geocode all the florists’ premises and most of the 35,000-odd delivery “locations” in the network. These locations represent towns, villages and other readily-identifiable settlements or landmarks that can be geocoded easily.

Then GeoConcept was used to work out the Members closest to each of the locations, and to calculate travel times and distances to them. This process drew on the routing capabilities of GeoConcept Expert edition, plus a MapMechanics module called Service Allocator, which can work out not just the nearest point to each chosen location, but also the next nearest four. This means that if the nearest member to a delivery point cannot undertake a job, it is easy to identify the next nearest.

In order to ensure that the travel times represent real-world experience (taking account of rush-hour traffic, road congestion and so on), MapMechanics supplied Interflora with a special version of the NAVTEQ Streets street-level map dataset featuring ITIS road speeds. These are speed records captured in real time from massive fleets of vehicles in day-to-day service across Britain’s entire road network. For geocoding of Members’ premises, Unit postcode point data was supplied.

“After initial doubts, Members soon realised that the calculated times really do correspond to real-life experience, and can be relied on,” says Nathan Young.

Once a list of nearest florists had been created for each location, the organisation was able to apply a standard delivery rate for every location for the first time. In essence, each member gets a basic flat fee for each delivery, plus a variable rate based on the time and distance to the destination.

Executing Members based within the location of a delivery are automatically allocated jobs within that location, but journeys that cross into another location are allocated on a rotational basis to any members who have indicated a willingness to cover it.

In the past, this meant that similar journeys could attract a variety of different charges according to who was the executing Member. However, now that Interflora knows exactly which Member is nearest to every location, it has been able to institute an arrangement in which the payment is always related to the shortest delivery time and distance, even if the nearest Member is not doing the job. “In such an arrangement, the scrupulous accuracy and credibility of the GeoConcept-based calculations was essential,” says Nathan Young.

Members are also allowed to override the system and nominate a specific florist to do the job, although the rate for the nearest member still applies.

In the Republic of Ireland, where there are no postcodes, Interflora Members have historically used paper maps, and the organisation has based locations on proximity to the nearest road junction. However, it is now developing a system in which head office staff use GeoConcept interactively alongside paper maps, determining the grid reference for delivery points simply by clicking on a screen map. For this it is using Mapflow StreetNet Plus street-level data, also supplied by MapMechanics.

“This is giving us a much clearer picture of the real distances involved,” adds Nathan Young, “and the cost implications of delivering where coverage is thin.”

The new system has been integrated with a wider-ranging new web-based ordering system developed by Interflora. This system, ROSE (Relay Order Send Execute), is used by florists in every shop to input orders to a central computer, which stores the GeoConcept-derived prices.

Whilst the matrix of delivery times and distances is produced on a one-off basis, in practice it is updated frequently to take account of constant small changes in the Interflora network. Such updating is likely to become an even more regular feature now that the organisation is rolling out a new range of services, which already include delivering champagne. “Not all members will necessarily offer all the new services,” says Nathan Young, “so we’ll need a series of cost matrices based on product type.”

The advantage of GeoConcept, he adds, is that it standardises and therefore simplifies the underlying time/distance cost calculations. “So it’s really a key factor in our expansion.”

Interflora operations dates back to 1920, and the network operates worldwide, but the British Unit (which includes various overseas territories) has its own independent structure, and was in effect “demutualised” in February 2005. It is now a limited company owned by 3i, its directors and its Members. It makes 4 million deliveries a year in Britain and Ireland, offering same-day delivery of floral and other gifts to most locations on orders placed by 2pm.